At 02:36 PM 6/29/2012, you wrote:
Would love a source if you have one. I have someone that has drummed into
folks that patterned cloth only goes as far back as the Middle Ages. The
Iron Age article will dumbstrike her and further back will blow her away. :)
-----Original Message-----
Actually, patterned cloth is much older than the Iron-Age.
Joan Jurancich
joa...@surewest.net
I have two books in my collection, both by Elizabeth Wayland
Barber. The first is "Prehistoric Textiles: The development of cloth
in the Neolithic and Bronze Ages, with special reference to the
Aegean"; the second is "The Mummies of Urumchi". The former has some
color pictures of some of the few surviving textiles that have
discernable color patterns (very few textiles survive in Europe
except for those in the lake bottoms of Switzerland (linen) and the
bog textiles in Northern Europe (woolens), both of which have any
colors totally masked by the preservation conditions; one exception
is in the salt mines). There are some Egyptian textiles preserved by
the dryness of the environment that show some colors. In the latter
book, again it is extreme dryness that preserves woolen textiles in
all their colorful glory.
It's interesting that someone has such a jaundiced view of textile
history. People have been weaving colorful patterned textiles for at
least the past 4,000 years. And, yes, I am an early textile
technology geek. 8-) In fact, in late October I am taking a 3-day
workshop on spinning and weaving for historic textile reproduction/re-creation.
Joan Jurancich
joa...@surewest.net
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